| Author | Message | ||
  Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 232 Registered: 8-2006 |
Yes, yes, yes, as Jack Kerouac would say. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
Rekha-- I still think the best advice I can give is to find a book by an artist you wish to emulate and see how that artist teaches foliage and skies. Then try to copy a couple of paintings by that artist until you get the technique down pat. That's what I did and now foliage and sky are quite second nature--at least the way I do them, is. All thanks to studying a particular teacher/artist's method. I know it best to be totally original, but everyone learned their method somehow, somewhere. | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 228 Registered: 8-2006 |
Thank you, Kisha, and you are not allowed to run watercolour aground by diappearing! | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
"To get deep darks I create a mix of winsor violet or both umber or both with pthalo green." I meant to delete this and get it accurate --It should have read --I mix pthalo blue and venetian red for the deepest darks. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
Okay--Now I see what your your are trying to do. I will share my approach, learned from various sources. I paint the sky first. If the painting is not about the sky, I paint usually a more or less blue sky that gradates from left to right in intensity depending upon where the sun is. I might also warm the sky and lighten toward the lower part (cerulean lower, cobalt upper (both perhaps brayed with "light red" or venetian red slightly). I use a 1 1/2" Robert Simmons White Sable One Stroke or a 1" Robert Simmons Sapphire Oval Wash for this. After it is bone dry I tackle the foliage masses. (Let's assume that's all that is in the painting to simplify things. Important to remember about painting foliage masses is to work quickly, work with the proper amount of water in the brush (proper for the effect you want, but never too much water), and have a wide variety of greens. Materials to achieve this-- Brush: 1" aquarelle flat (preferred) Paint: Pthalo Green-raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber, a mars red such as light red, venetian red or indian red, cadmium yellow light or pale (and pthalo blue to mix darks with the venetian or light red) The variety of greens is achieved by constantly mixing the carious earths with the pthalo. To get highlights in the trees I dry brush cad yellow into the wet wash. To get deep darks I create a mix of winsor violet or both umber or both with pthalo green. I picked this up from reading an old book on Eliot O'Hara recommended here and it works very well. You only have to show leaves there the foliage touches the sky and I do thet by pushing the brush (scumbling) on it's edge away from me, creating a loose and ragged feel. This works even better with a flat but I noticed you use a Kolisnsky round which works if dry enough. If you scumble the brush around gaps will appear and these are your "sky holes" in the foliage. Remember you are not trying to duplicate what you see, but you are trying to create a convincing mass of foliage on the paper, one that works in your painting. The point is to create a big massive shape that varies naturalistic in values and colors, a shape that stands for masses of trees (forest). To create brancehs, draw wet paint from the foliage wash across the sky holes to look like branches, or, what I do, use end edge of the flat to "stamp" a line. When the foliage wash is bone dry you can also paint a few branches across the sunlit foliage with a rigger or use the flat on edge to ":stamp" lines thaat stand for branches. To describe trunks, I paint a few trunk lines with a brush once the foliage is bone dry in the following manner. For dark trunks, using a Robert Simmons white nylon #10 or so, I paint the trunks with a few large branches across areas of light foliage, allowing the line to play hide and seek with the foliage in places to suggest it is obscured by leaves. To paint trunks across dark foliage, using the same white nylon #10 I brush a stroke of clear water as if it were the trunk. I wait 20 seconds, then with a tissue press firmly at the base of the "trunk" and wipe hard upward in one fast stroke. This creates a light, shadowed trunk (unless your brand of paper won't allow this effect* if so, see below). I finish off with a rigger describing little branchlets. *Also, when the foliage wash is 1/2 dry you can take the side of an aquarelle brush (to kind with a chisel handle end) and carve out trunks and branches in the drying paint. Doing this too soon will Because the paint to refill your etched out line and make it darker--something you want to avoid. | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 226 Registered: 8-2006 |
Sorry, I couldn't get to respond sooner, Kisha, as "Due to previous abuse, users from your internet service provider are not permitted to post to, administer, search, or otherwise participate on this board. We apologize for this inconvenience." Kisha I am focussing on the foliage masses and wanted to find a slick way of painting the sky amongst these foliage masses. You are right I need to practice a lot. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
Oh Rekha--in my opinion being concerned about individual leaves is the wrong focus. Focus instead on the big shapes made by the masses of foliage. As far as brushing lighter leaf color into a wet sky--use a big 1" or bigger brush loaded with a much lighter contrasting color such as cadmium yellow or (god's forgive me) Opera and with a single stroke brush it into the wet sky. With some practice a few strokes will look like hazy trees in fall foliage. Holbein paints work best for this trick since they don't disperse as other brands do. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
I agreer with her first advice--it's what was said here prior. Here second advice, when the leaves are light , is one of many solutions and perhaps the most fraught with problems. Other solutions if the leaves are lighter--mask the leaves with frisket and then paint the sky, or paint the sky and the wet in wet brush in the lighter color with densely concentrated light paint. Remember--ever watercolorists works differently so there is no one solution. Be careful who you chose for advice unless you are sure you want to paint like them. Personally, any one who advises paint the dark sky patches with a small brush between the already painted light leaves is no my kind of watercolorist. I would go to a bookstore and get a good book by someone whose paintings i admire and follow their methods. That way you know the end result will be what you like and you know the person is at least skilled enough as a teacher to put out a book (that doesn't mean all books are gospel, just a little more useful than word of mouth on the internet). | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 225 Registered: 8-2006 |
Thanks, Eric and also for mentioning O'Hara and Maitland Graves. I am reading The Art of Color and Design; some of the tables of value distribution appear complex. Kisha, it was sky showing through foliage that I was after. I wrote to the artist Ruth Beeve who had this to say about painting it: "If the leaves are darker, you wash in the light sky and let it dry. Then you paint over the sky with the darker leaves--letting patches of sky show through. If the leaves are lighter, you paint the leaves first in light values. Let them dry. Then you paint the sky shapes between the clumps of leaves. Be careful to paint each area of sky the same shade. If you do not, they won't read as sky. Also, vary the size and shape of your sky areas. If you do not, the painting will be boring." I am happy with that, which is what John Pike was doing as well, only that I didn't think painting sky behind foliage was so long-winded. I thought there was some time-saving trick one could use. | ||
Eric Unregistered guest |
Rekha, the only reason I remembered that Pike technique is because I've read and re-read that book so many times it's ingrained in my mind. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
Rekha--Actually the sky showing through brances etc is pretty irrelevant in almost all case (except maybe sunsets). Perhaps you are focusing too much on minutae. The only thing you need is a wash of the basic sky color under your trees. Some people paint the sky last to create harmony with the land. Usually the sky is so light at the horizon that just allowing sky showing between branches etc to be white will work if it is horizon level sky. | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 219 Registered: 8-2006 |
Thanks, Eric. What he has done is leave a little room around the leaves to paint the sky, which I don't know would be noticeable when hung on the wall. This also brings me to another point. I have been reading books as I buy them but when it comes to using them during a painting procedure, I cannot recall my references. How do you keep track and locate specific aspects you have learnt from a book. | ||
Eric Unregistered guest |
Just to expand on the Pike reference, he shows a step by step process starting on page 108, called "Columbia, Fisherman's Cove". Here he first paints light yellow leaves, then when dry, he paints a darker blue sky negatively around the leaves. Then he comes back and adds some green leaves to the yellow, making the leaves appear sunlit. | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 217 Registered: 8-2006 |
Thank you. I thought that there was an easier way around it. Hey ho! I shall look up Pike right now | ||
Eric Unregistered guest |
Rekha, you could paint the sky negatively around the leaves, so the sky would be darker than the yellow leaves. The best example I've seen of this technique is from "John Pike Paints Watercolors". | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 216 Registered: 8-2006 |
What if there is light-toned foliage in front of the sky, for example yellow-coloured leaves? | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Paint the sky first and then paint the branches on top of the shy. The branches are always darker than the sky, therefore it's a layering process. | ||
Rekha Senior Member Username: Rekha Post Number: 215 Registered: 8-2006 |
Can someone tell me how to tackle painting sky showing through branches of trees: stippling, masking or anything else | ||
Grizrev Advanced Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 191 Registered: 8-2006 |
Eugene, Your work is truly gorgeous -- and I don't hand out compliments lightly! Kisha, I'm sure yours is every bit as impressive as Lynch's -- I like doing trees as a massed shape too. His treatment of trees is his own very distinctive style, which is fine, but not necessarily the "standard" to be emulated. I'd love to see your golf course painting -- can you upload it? By the way, I saw on one of these threads that someone had discovered Holbein's luscious colors -- they are Lynch's favorites as well. | ||
Eugene Senior Member Username: Eugene Post Number: 231 Registered: 8-2006 |
I've become used to people watching me paint but once when I was painting in a "touristy" area, one of them, looking over my shoulder said. "My aunt paints watercolor and SHE's GOOD! That told me what she thought of MY work. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
Amazing--The one entitled afternoon golf in the workshop demos section is very similar to what I did --I'm not saying mine is 1% as impressive, but almost the same scene with the same colors. The green he used across the foreground is identical to my shot in the dark effort. I painted my background trees as a dark mass and his scene is more like what was a actually there--lots of varied individual trees. | ||
Grizrev Advanced Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 190 Registered: 8-2006 |
Kisha, Here's a link: http://www.tomlynch.com/golf.cfm | ||
Grizrev Advanced Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 189 Registered: 8-2006 |
Kisha, From your description of the golf course painting, it sounds a lot like the beautiful watercolors of golf courses Tom Lynch has done, many on commission. You might look at some he has posted on his web site. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Kisha, that’s what my neighbor said when I first asked for permission to paint in the cow pasture – “watch out for the bull!” So far I’ve been lucky! The built in “zoom” in the brain is one of many visual skills. I’ve always had good visual skills, but if you are having trouble with mental zooming don’t worry, it’s a skill that can be learned. Try looking at a distant object and fixing it in your mind. Close your eyes and keep the object fixed in your mind. Try to make the mental image as clear as you can. When you get good at that, then try (with your eyes closed) slowly changing (the image in your mind) to a larger or smaller size. Let me know how it works for you. | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
George--It's a good thing a bull didn't come over. Some people are terrified of sharks. I am terrified of bulls. This brings up another plein air experience. Thursday I met someone to paint at a scenic overlook on a highway. The skyline of the city was on the horizon looking down through a long canyon / valley. My painting kept the whole vista more or less in scale as I saw it. My compadre's painting featured a blowup of of the faint skyline and only about the final 10% of the long valley / canyon. I was amazed at her ability to use her mind as a zoom lens. No matter how hard I try I can not zoom in on distant details and blow them up into a full painting. It looks like seeing the house at 1K feet required you to do this. Is it just me or is it truly difficult to paint distant things as if they were close? | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Whenever I paint in my neighbor’s cow pasture the cows always come over to see what I’m doing. I don’t really mind them, but one day I was painting the old farm house and the cows keep getting in the way and blocking my view. I had to finish the painting from beyond the fence (a few thousand feet away from the house). | ||
Kisha Unregistered guest |
I'd like to hear tales of plein air outsings -- past or present. Here's one: This morning I went to my life drawing class. I was a bit late (uncharacteristic of me) and when I opened the door the smell of solvent almost gagged me. I left, which is a shame because the model's 3 hour long pose had begun and the light struck her shoulder and cheek beautifully. The group meets in the clubhouse of a golf course, so instead of making a stink (it was 70 degrees outside and I wanted to paint, not confront) I set out to try what I had never tried--paint a golf course. This, or course is fraught with problems, because easels are unwelcome on golf courses. I walked along the cart path and say a huge dumpster just along the edge of the fairway. Evidently it was there to collect refurbishing materials. It was huge, and when I walked around behind it the view was the best on the course and the low sun had that side in complete shadow. I set up behind the dumpster, did 2 value sketches and a painting. Once someone hit a ball right to my right and when he stooped down to get it, he looked to his left and there I was painting. He looked very baffled, said "Hi," and continued golfing. I wanted to be careful in the painting not to overstate the greens but when I finished the painting looked dull. Frustrated, I mixed a pthalo blue--gamboge mixture that was very deep and intense and washed it over the foreground as if it were a caste shadow. I also made an almost black mixture of burnt sienna and pthalo blue and restated the background trees. The focal point--two distant golfers putting, jump out and the putting green--pale now, look brilliantly sunlit. The result was absolutely stunning. I am amazed how much I learn by just trying things and hoping they work out. Any plein air stories appreciated. |
